Turnabout is Fair Play
by charleygirl
Summary: Christine gets her own back.


**Author's Note:**

Written for a challenge at the Livejournal community great_tales, from the prompt 'seduction'. Loosely set in the ALW stage musicalverse, where Erik doesn't buy Christine insane amounts of flowers.

**Disclaimer:**

Not mine, just playing.

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><p><strong>TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY<strong>

Resting her head on one hand, Christine looked from the letter to the bouquet on her dressing table and sighed.

The flowers were beautiful, there was no doubt about that, outrageously expensive and tied with what must have been two yards of soft pink silk ribbon. They were so fresh that she could still see dewdrops upon some of the petals. Unfortunately, lovely as they were, they did not move her with anything more than mild irritation. The gift, though sent with affection, smacked of the hope held by its sender and just made her feel... disappointed. Sighing again, she folded the note and slid it into the drawer with all the others. Raoul had been busy all week, inundating her with presents – chocolates, fruit baskets, items of jewellery – in an ever more desperate attempt to make her accept his invitation to dinner. She knew she should be flattered, and that the other girls in the ballet corps were insanely jealous, but even the prospect of a meal she could never have afforded on her small salary and then dancing till dawn could not fire any excitement within her.

Turning away from the flowers, Christine suddenly became aware of a brooding presence behind her and glanced into the looking glass on the table to see that Erik had appeared in the room. She knew he liked it to seem that he had arrived as if by magic, but by now she had seen some of his tricks and could just glimpse the full-length mirror on the wall sliding discreetly back into place. He crossed to her side, and she could see in their joint reflection his visible eyebrow arch quizzically beneath the brim of his hat.

"Has the vicomte done something to upset you, mon ange?" he enquired, a hopeful note in his voice as he doubtless rejoiced in prospective discomfiture for his rival.

Christine gestured to the bouquet, and the remains of several others which stood on almost every available surface in vases and pots and jugs. Her room looked like a high-class florist's shop. "He's trying far too hard. I know he wants me to accept, but this just feels too... too... well, too easy! There's no thought behind it, just an assumption that I will fall for flowers and chocolates like any other girl. Even though we've known each other for years he hasn't stopped to consider what _I_ might like."

Erik touched the petals of one of the red roses with the tip of a long finger. "A typical thoughtless aristocrat. I assume he sent a servant out to order these – I can't imagine our dear Monsieur de Chagny doing his own shopping."

"Precisely! It is all too impersonal. Seduction should be more than this!"

"And what do you know of seduction, my dear?" he asked, amused now. He sat down in the armchair beside her stool and crossed one elegant leg over the other, leaning back and regarding her with interest.

"I know enough to be aware that it is an art," she replied with a wicked little smile. One could not spend all their waking hours in an opera house without learning something of love in all its many and varied forms. And then there was her teacher... "After all, my Angel of Music is a man of many talents."

The frown that now touched Erik's forehead matched the expression of his mask. "Christine..."

Getting to her feet, she glided the short distance to his chair and moved behind him, trailing her fingers lightly across his chest. Her other arm wrapped around his neck, and she sang softly, "_Night time sharpens, heightens each sensation... darkness stirs, and wakes imagination_..."

He tensed as her fingertips brushed the unmasked side of his face. When he spoke, his normally beautiful voice was slightly strangled. "How do you - "

Christine's smile became a grin. Teasing the starched collar of his shirt, she bent her head close to his so that she could whisper in his ear. "The hypnotism doesn't work, Erik."

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><p>Later, Christine wondered whether anyone would believe her if she told them she had managed to make the Phantom of the Opera blush.<p> 


End file.
